Tuesday, January 26, 2016

Sharing the Gospel and Being Prepared for What Comes Next Session 1 - The Gospel

I’ve been given the opportunity to teach a Sunday Night Bible Study at my local church home consisting of 8 Sessions over the next 4 months. I will try to get each session posted by the Monday after I teach each that particular session. Here we go:

The authority this Bible Study will stand on and grow from is Scripture. I believe Scripture to be sufficient to navigate life and should be the lens in which we view our world (2 Timothy 3:16; Matthew 4:4), and God’s word has been and will continue to be proven true (Psalm 18:30).

The Question we will begin with, is this: What makes up the foundation of what we (those who claim to follow Jesus Christ) believe and base our lives? Most who are in church would answer that with “the Gospel of Jesus Christ”, but I would ask what do we mean by that? The Good News, of course! I would agree; in part. But the Good News needs a context.So I ask, how can we have good new without bad news? Wouldn’t the Good News just be “news” without some sort of bad news. All this may sound trivial and argumentative, but I believe being able to clearly articulate what we claim to believe is paramount to actually living as Jesus Christ would have us do. Basically, what I am trying to get us to do is contextualize the Good News.

In order to set the stage for the Good News of Jesus Christ, we must back up and begin with God. The following declarative statement will begin the logic stream of this Bible Study:


I believe there is One God, who is the Creator of all things, understand all things, and cares for His creation.

When I say “One God” I do so in a Deuteronomy 6:4 way, “Hear O Israel: the LORD our God, the LORD is one!”, and I say that within the context of 1 John 5:7, “For there are three that bear witness in heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit; and these three are one.” Now, from this statement, our logic stream will flow, raising questions which we will need to answer; let’s begin.

So if there is a God, and He is the One who created everything, it would logically mean, that as the Creator, He has the right to rule, set boundaries, and reward and punish His creation based upon those rules and boundaries which He has set. We see this specifically in Exodus 34:5-7, as well as throughout the account of Creation in the beginning of he book of Genesis.

So then, the logic flow continues; logically as part of His creation, are expected to abide, by and within, the rules and boundaries laid out by our Creator. We see this proven to be true in the account of Creation and the Garden of Eden (Genesis Ch1-3). Unfortunately for mankind, we are unable to live within the boundaries of God’s authority. We see this hold true with Adam and Eve in Genesis 3, and then we see that this failure extends to all of us (Romans 5:12). Examples of this failure can be found in Isaiah 59:1-15, Psalm 14:1-4, Romans 3:23, and numerous other places in Scripture.

This failure means more than just a broken rule, it means sin has entered into our world. 1 John 3:4 defines sin like this, “Whoever commits sin commits lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness”. In the Old Testament God expresses His displeasure in Israel’s rebelliousness (sin) in Deuteronomy 9:7 and lays out the punishment for rebellion (sin) in Joshua 1:18. In the New Testament, Paul reaffirms death as a punishment for sin in Romans 6:23.

Now, with the establishment of these two facts; God’s law is to be obeyed, and we are unable to obey it on our own, we now come to the fundamental question of Christianity; how can a sinful people be reconciled to a Holy God, because as Isaiah says in Ch 59:2, “your iniquities have separated you from God; And your sins have hidden His face from you”.

Fortunately for us, God is a good and just God (Psalm 136 & Psalm 25:8-11). Knowing that we as a people are unable to make our way back to God on our own, and because He is good, we see His desire for our reconciliation to Him in 2 Peter 3:9-“The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is long suffering towards us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance”. Because God desires our reconciliation, “...when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive adoption as sons” (Galatians 4:4-5).

God sent Jesus, to make a way for Mankind (His creation; you & me) to reunite with the Creator. Here, I feel I must point out that in no way was Jesus Christ a backup plan; His being sent was not a way to fix an unexpected and unforeseen fall of Man (John 1:1, Hebrews 1:1-3, Colossians 1:13-23 for reference of this). It was God’s intention from the beginning to have Jesus be, “the way, the truth and the life” and that “No one comes to the Father except through [Him]” (John 14:6). Therefore, Jesus Christ became the “bridge” -the way back- between fallen man and a Holy God and He accomplished this through death on a Cross and His Resurrection.

When we use the words, “come to Jesus” it isn’t a physical walking toward but an understanding and accepting that Jesus Christ made and became that bridge. Now we see that through Christ’s death and resurrection, a way was made for mankind to be reconciled to God, but this raises the logical question, how does one “come to Him” and what is our responsibility when we get there?

In Next week’s Session we will examine more closely what it means “to come to Jesus” and how we do that.

Don't take my word for it, be like the church at Berea, “[They] were more fair-minded than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness, and searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so.” Acts 17:11